This a movie review of SAVAGES.

“Chon and Ben grow some of the best weed in the world,” O. SAVAGES could have been a thrillingly nutty crime caper. I'm a fan of Oliver Stone. All he had to do was ramp up the film to the next level of energy. I kept feeling he almost has something here. He could've crossed U TURN with ANY GIVEN SUNDAY and knocked this drug tale out of the park. It's the man who wrote SCARFACE and MIDNIGHT EXPRESS after all, and the awesomely insane CONAN THE BARBARIAN. He appears to have lost his audacity with this project. I so wanted to dig SAVAGES, but any hope of that was completely scuppered by an appalling ending. I keep asking myself, ‘What was he thinking?’

Taylor Kitsch. He’s starred in not one, not two, but three duds this year: JOHN CARTER, BATTLESHIP and now SAVAGES. I certainly am not glad at his misfortune. He maybe a bland lead, but these turkeys are not his fault. The alchemy of writing and directing has let him down. Even with Benicio Del Toro going all psycho, Salma Hayek channelling scary/smoking-hot drug lord, Blake Lively exuding sultry California surf babe, and John Travolta sleazing it up as a corrupt Drug Enforcement Agent, even with all of that, SAVAGES is an unsatisfying ride. Lurching from sadistic violence, not out of place in a film involving a war between drug dealers, to a dazed dreamy 90s shampoo commercial feel, the tone and pacing are all over the place. We have ‘nice’ indie drug manufacturers (Kitsch and Aaron Johnson), who come onto the radar of some less than nice narcotics traffickers interested in a hostile take-over. It gets messy for everyone. But these brutal rivals remind of the cartel in 24, season three, which uncomprehendingly is both profoundly sinister and dizzyingly incompetent. Each side knows stuff and doesn’t know stuff, but there’s no consistency to their intel; and they don’t react how anyone with common sense would. At times all appear prepared for their opponents, and then they are completely blind-sided. This makes for a frustrating watch! Oh yeah, and there’s dialogue like this: “I had orgasms. He had ‘wargasms’”. It doesn’t help that ‘nice’ drug dealing has been scorching our brains out on the small screen with BREAKING BAD. SAVAGES might’ve been hugely energetic and demented, but instead it was nonsensical and half baked (pardon the pun!).